After 16 years of working together on the MSNBC.com website, Microsoft and NBC News have finally parted company with yesterday’s rebranding of the MSNBC.com website under the NBCNews.com banner.
The rumors of a breakup have been around since the beginning of the year and had intensified recently. The deal was struck on Friday, allowing for the rebranding to take effect on Sunday.
Microsoft and NBC News had already parted company in 2005 from their cable news network partnership, though the network maintained the Microsoft portion of the name so that it would stay integrated with the website.
Beginning in 2013, MSNBC will have its own website and will presumably hang on to the name even though all ties with Microsoft will have been severed.
In the meantime, Microsoft walks away with a reported $300 million and no longer has to deal with helping to manage a news-content site which was well outside its area of expertise. That began to show in the last few years as other news sites surpassed MSNBC.com in web traffic.
NBC News wants visitors to believe that the changes signal a new day at the network, but we all know that while the name may have changed, the bias remains the same.
Don Irvine is the chairman of Accuracy in Media and its sister organization Accuracy in Academia. As the son of Reed Irvine, who launched AIM in 1969, he developed an understanding of media bias at an early age, and has been actively involved with AIM for over 30 years.
